


A winters tale

by jessamoo



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:29:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8249069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessamoo/pseuds/jessamoo
Summary: Mathilda tells Connor a fairytale about Edmund and Susan





	

**Author's Note:**

> let it be known that i am all about deconstructing the princess myth and in no way do i think susan needs saving by any man ever, this is just a fairytale...

"Once upon a time there lived a very beautiful princess."

Mathilda's arm had started to go all tingly where Connor lay on it. She didn't mind though, so she didn't move him. Besides, the boy was not so heavy. Surprisingly, spending the first two years of his life in a Whitechapel prison hadn't seemed to have done him too much harm. His smallness was mostly due to his father's stocky figure, that energetic sort of skinniness that still took up too much space somehow. And the slightness of his mother, who had always been as short and sharp as a tack.

It would be good practice too, Mathilda decided. She had married Drum at twenty two and now at twenty four she was going to be a mother for the first time. Connor was eight now, but still. He was not so old that he could not enjoy a story - especially one from his step sister.

"But this beautiful princess had been cursed by her wicked father, and her whole heart had become covered in ice. Many men had tried to chip away at that cold diamond of a heart, but none had succeeded. Not since she had been cursed had she felt a thing for any man, as that was when she had lost her true love. And so the princess had determined to never feel anything again. It made her cold, like a statue, and soon even her pale skin began to turn to ice."

Mathilda glanced at the paper butterflies that fluttered by the window. She had made them with Deborah Goren's wards on one of her many visits. They make her think of the time before. Despite everything she had learned later, she had felt and still felt safe with Susan. She had called her a queen and her father a king. She hadn't known then any of what would come to pass between them. She still considered them the two people who had saved her. Who had enabled her to save herself. She smiles as the sunset floods the room in a deep warm glow.

"Soon the whole kingdom was covered in snow. It was winter, everywhere, and the people suffered. Frost bit at their skin and crept into their bones. For this they blamed their princess." Mathilda sighs, thinking about the dark days when the only photo she had had of Susan was the drawing in all the papers. She'd ripped off the hateful headlines underneath. "Until one day a stranger rode into the kingdom. He was a king from very far away, and he was very very lonely." She squeezed Connor to her a little tighter. "He was trying to get home, to get to his daughters wedding. He had gotten lost along the way."

An abyss, he had always called it. Her father didn't talk much about those days, the days of his exile. He had come back a different person, just like she had. Thats what happens when you spend too long in the dark. And when you lose someone, as her father and Susan had.

"Through the snows and storms the lonely king saw a single light shining. This was his guide, and he let it lead him all the way to the castle of the ice princess. No one had approached that place for a long time, because they had been too afraid. But the king was a very brave man, and so he entered the castle."

Their progress had been slow. Susan had not handled the loss of her husband well. She had crawled somewhere deep inside herself and had refused to come out. She had been vicious before, it was true, but there had been an irrepressible spark about her, a boldness that couldn't be put into words. That seemed to leave her for a while, after Matthew. Some part of Caitlin Swift died with Matthew Judge, and Susan Hart had emerged a different creature. She became like the princess in the story - tragic, and brittle. It had taken her a long time to come back to them. Connor, of course, had steered his mama home. But even now, married again, safe and loved, Susan's head would whip around, eyes wild and hungry, whenever she heard an american accent, like she was willing his ghost to come back and haunt her.

"And when the king entered the castle," Mathilda carried on in a softer voice. "He came upon the ice princess, all alone, and he thought she was the most beautiful woman in all the land. He saw not the ice that coated her skin, the snowflakes in her long blonde hair, the sharp icicle glint in her blue eyes. All he saw was a lovely, lonely woman, who was strong and hard and fierce. But alone. The king knew what it was to be alone. And so he took hold of her hand, and with his touch she felt her skin began to warm once more. He told her the story of how he sought his daughter, how he longed to be reunited with his child. And the story was so sad that it melted the heart of the ice princess. Soon all the snow and ice around them began to thaw, the ice bricks that made up her castle started falling all around them. These fell right on top of the princess's wicked father, buried him, the man who had cursed her so long ago."

It did feel like a long time ago. It had been two years, almost three, since they had returned, Jackson coughing up blood and trying to grip her fathers hand. "You look after 'em! Your promise me Reid, you take care of her and my boy. Promise me, God damn it!" Susan had flung herself over him, his blood soaking her dress. The only wound that had ever beaten the doctor. They had whispered secret things to one another that she doubted even Reid would ever get to know. All until he had picked Susan up, pulled her away as she clawed to be free of him, but he did not let her fall. He'd taken Jackson's ring and given it to her on a long gold chain for christmas, and it had been the first time Mathilda had seen her cry. Susan had held Reid's hand to tightly her knuckles turned white, but he didn't even wince, not once.

He had been true to his word, his promise to his friend. Her father had fought through the wilderness and he had cleared their names. Made it so they could exist in the world once more. He had brought Susan back to be with her boy. 

"The princess became the queen. And when she and the king emerged from the ruins of what had been her prison, they saw the whole kingdom bathed in sunshine. It was summer again. And so they rode back to his daughter, and soon the king and queen were married."

It didn't happen as quickly or as smoothly in real life. Neither Susan nor Mathilda's father ever thought they would be married again. And so for a while he was what he had always been - her friend. Mathilda lived with Drum by that time and was tempted at first to come home to take care of her father after he had been away for so long. But she found she did not need to. Both her father and Susan had been unsure about what lay in their futures, and so the clung to one another, seeking that familiarity. They had always understood one another, even when they had been enemies. They often took tea together, like they used to years ago. She even started doing his shirts for him like before. They told Connor about his father and Reid would go round to play with him and talk to him as he grew.

Mathilda was not privy to all of the small, secret moments where it changed from friendship to something else for her father and Susan. She did know that they slowly began to seem happier, especially in one anothers company. That eventually she allowed him to call her Caitlin and that by this time they saw each other everyday. It was a soft, delicate procession into marriage that went against both their natures, and yet felt so natural in its quiet simplicity.

The ending of Mathilda's fairytale, delivered to a now sleeping Connor, was the same as the real story. That much she could attest to. The queen had found herself a king. Mathilda kissed the still bright white blonde atop Connor's head and placed a loving hand on her belly, which was only just beginning to swell with her own baby.

"And they all lived," 

Despite everything, she thinks to herself, despite it all, despite themselves, 

"Happily ever after."


End file.
